Heteronomy - not!
A homily I read today asked the question, "who will be your God?" That seems like such an important question to ask oneself. Thinking about this reminded me of a past lecture on Kant by Keith Ward, and I realized my God is kind of Kant-like, at least in practice. Here's that bit of Professor Ward's lecture (it sounds like the idea of the primacy of conscience) with the video of the whole thing below my transcription (watch the whole videa here) ....
"And what is the practical consideration about God? Kant thought it was mainly two-fold. One is that God is the ground of moral obligation ... when you feel there is an objective moral obligation, you're in fact hearing the voice of God .... it's not that you first of all believe in God, you theoretically have some arguments that there's a God, and then you say our God commands you to do something so I must do it. Kant was totally opposed to that. So Kant would have been opposed to anybody who said "I can show there's a God and that God, for example, inspired the writing of the Bible [and] because it says in the Bible you should do X, therefore you should do it .... Rather he felt it's the other way around.
You argue from your deepest and strongest moral obligation to the existence of that which grounds this obligation in objective reality. You call that God. So it can never be the case for Kant that God commands something immoral. That's just not a possibility for him because you decide what God is by finding out what your strongest moral obligation is. So if you think the strongest moral obligation is to love your neighbor as yourself, then you can say ... God is love. And you're not just saying I'm going to use the word God to stand for some human obligation - what you're trying to say is, ultimate reality grounds this objective obligation ....
For Kant, the Will of God cannot conflict with your duty, your moral obligation, because you define the will of God in terms of your moral obligation. So there cannot be a conflict between revealed morality and your own felling of what is right or wrong - it is your feeling that will actually determine you to accept something as a revelation or not. And if you have a revelation that tells you to do something immoral, for example if in the Bible it tells you that women should always obey their husbands, as I believe it does my wife tells me, then you should say, if that conflicts with my moral obligation it's not what God says. I don't care if it's in the Bible or not, because that's not what God is, God doesn't do that sort of thing. So Kant was clearly not somebody who let his morality be determined by revelation. He called that heteronomy, taking your moral beliefs on authority from somewhere else, either a book or a person or a group of people. So he did believe in moral autonomy in the sense that you have to start with what you think is right and your religion can never conflict with that ...."
"And what is the practical consideration about God? Kant thought it was mainly two-fold. One is that God is the ground of moral obligation ... when you feel there is an objective moral obligation, you're in fact hearing the voice of God .... it's not that you first of all believe in God, you theoretically have some arguments that there's a God, and then you say our God commands you to do something so I must do it. Kant was totally opposed to that. So Kant would have been opposed to anybody who said "I can show there's a God and that God, for example, inspired the writing of the Bible [and] because it says in the Bible you should do X, therefore you should do it .... Rather he felt it's the other way around.
You argue from your deepest and strongest moral obligation to the existence of that which grounds this obligation in objective reality. You call that God. So it can never be the case for Kant that God commands something immoral. That's just not a possibility for him because you decide what God is by finding out what your strongest moral obligation is. So if you think the strongest moral obligation is to love your neighbor as yourself, then you can say ... God is love. And you're not just saying I'm going to use the word God to stand for some human obligation - what you're trying to say is, ultimate reality grounds this objective obligation ....
For Kant, the Will of God cannot conflict with your duty, your moral obligation, because you define the will of God in terms of your moral obligation. So there cannot be a conflict between revealed morality and your own felling of what is right or wrong - it is your feeling that will actually determine you to accept something as a revelation or not. And if you have a revelation that tells you to do something immoral, for example if in the Bible it tells you that women should always obey their husbands, as I believe it does my wife tells me, then you should say, if that conflicts with my moral obligation it's not what God says. I don't care if it's in the Bible or not, because that's not what God is, God doesn't do that sort of thing. So Kant was clearly not somebody who let his morality be determined by revelation. He called that heteronomy, taking your moral beliefs on authority from somewhere else, either a book or a person or a group of people. So he did believe in moral autonomy in the sense that you have to start with what you think is right and your religion can never conflict with that ...."
posted by crystal | 7:24 PM
2 Comments:
I think that's very good, and it's basically the way I see things.
The only caveat I would add is that it can become too easy for an individual to believe he or she is following the dictates of his or her conscience when actually he or she is rationalizing a separate desire that is more or less subconscious.
The value of community and tradition act as a counterbalance to that. You accept whatever tradition as revealed (whether it's scripture or something else), and that allows you to test what you think your conscience is dictating against an outside standard that is bigger that yourself. Ideally, these two forces, conscience and community, will be in balance, so that you won't on one hand be ruled by your own whims in the false guide of conscience or on the other by slavishly accepting a literal reading of scripture or a religious reader's dictates as unbending law. It's tougher that way, but that's why God gave us brains and hearts.
Liam,
Yes, I agree with you. What Kant's way also leaves out is the opportunity to be surprised - the possibility that a valid view may exist that you would never have considered on your own. And he doesn't allow for info from religious experience either, as Ward pinted out.
But I noticed that I do tend to act this way. I wonder if a person ever is able to disregard what their conscience tells them even when all other sources disagree with what they feel is right ... so hard to keep an open mind/heart.
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